My my, how time flies! It’s actually been around this time 5 years ago that Hackenstein and I first explored the idea of going into business together, and only 6 months later the jobs were quit and the wheels that eventually lead to our founding on this gloriest of days in 2013 set in motion.

To celebrate this joyous occasion, we’ve recorded a short birthday video, looking back on our past endeavours and perhaps hinting at one or two new ones.

The time has finally come! Today we release our turn-based dungeon-puzzler The Wizard! For free!

Now, you might think to yourself, “Really? For free? But why?” Well, it’s not the first time that question has come up, so we had ample time to prepare a detailed and all-encompassing explanation:

…why not?

We look at The Wizard as an opportunity to share our lighter side with you and to experiment with various ideas and approaches to developing and releasing a game, and we just don’t wanna charge you for that right now. If you happen to like what we do and would like to support us, that’s awesome! You can donate whatever amount you see fit over on The Wizard’s page. It’s basically Pay What You Want, you can play for free or help us out, whatever you feel like. Rest assured, you’ll have our undying gratitude either way.

Oh, but that’s not all! As a special thanks to those particularly generous, donations of $6 or more will get a digital copy of the magical The Wizard soundtrack!

But enough of that, it’s time for you to go and play The Wizard now! Hope you have fun!

Hackenstein

ps. For those in the business of hosting high-quality, mobile-ready HTML5 games, we’ve got good news for you, too! From today on, non-exclusive licenses for The Wizard will be available in the FGL Game Shop. You don’t even have to use FGL if you don’t want to. Just send me a mail!

Exactly one year and ~4 hours ago (on a much nicer and warmer day, by the way), we sat in a very old man’s super fancy office, listening to him read a 1000-page contract at a pace slower than hair grows. It was the last of a series of tedious steps which I, gracious as I am, let Hackenstein handle entirely on his own, so this is all I know about what happened there.

For all you lovely people not familiar with the DCP, it’s basically the biggest award show we have in Germany. It’s huge. As such, getting nominated, too, is huge. And I’m speechless. Then again, what is there to say other than “thank you?” Exactly, so let’s just do that:

First of all, there’s all the people from Ludum Dare who made my first jam a really great experience; moonbeamwhim who posted it to reddit; Rute who saw it and wrote its first review; Angelica Norgren and Thomas Arnroth who brought it to Sweden’s attention; Rami Ismail and all the other wonderful people on Twitter who passed it along and provided some fantastic quotes for me to brag with; Lena LeRay who wrote one of the first articles; Alexis Trust and Mike Bithell who gave it its next big push, which I think might’ve been responsible for Meg Turney hearing about it and recommending it on SourceFed Nerd; Amy Silbergeld who repeatedly lent her support when things became a little tough to process; Becky Chambers who reviewed it for The Mary Sue; Leena van Deventer and Amy Gray who quadrupled our Australian audience; Lara Luccas who surpassed them all and brought us the most hits we’ve ever gotten in a single day; everybody else who supported and shared the game, everybody who wrote, argued, discussed, everybody who played and everybody who couldn’t but passed it along anyway—everybody except 4chan. I mean, two threads and not even a little increase in publicity? I expected better from you.

But there’s one person in particular I should mention. I don’t talk about her often because she wants to be kept out of it, understandably, but please don’t forget that there is a real person at the heart of this, a person who had to live through and with it, who trusted me with her story and allowed this game to be made. It’s she who’s to thank for this, so here it goes:

I hope you realize what happened here. There are people writing how much the experience changed them, how they had to confront some truths about themselves they weren’t comfortable with, people who say, “I get it now.” There are victims whom this helped come to terms with what happened and to accept that it really wasn’t their fault, that what the other people say about them wasn’t true after all. I’ve gotten many messages of this nature, from men and women alike, and I’m sure there’s even more who didn’t write. This story gave them something, changed them, and all of that because of you.

Yes, you. Without you, none of this would’ve happened. While this’ll never make the past less horrifying, it will and does do some good. You did what so many people strive for and the fewest ever achieve. You changed the world for the better. Maybe just by a small amount so far, but it’s mind-blowing nonetheless, and don’t forget, all of this from only 25.000 players. As we go forward, these numbers will rise. Every future game we’ll make will generate new attention for The Day. More attitudes will change, more people will find solace, maybe it’ll inspire even more to speak out and tell their own stories (which, if any of you do, let me know and I’ll help you in any way I can to get it out there).

We can’t single-handedly fix all the world’s problems overnight, but we can contribute, and you did. So if you ever feel small and insignificant, remember the hundreds of people whose lives you bettered, and the attitudes you’ve changed for the good of other victims. You matter. Not just to me, your friends, your family, but to people all over the world, you matter. I mean, Robert tap-dancing Pattinson, if that isn’t incredible!

So yeah, from me, and everybody else I’m sure, all the thanks, love, and happiness in the world to you. God knows you deserve it.

Again things are happening in that wonderful industry of ours, and again publishers and corporations are managing to make the world just a little bit worse. Their newest stroke of genius: Copyright claims on YouTube Let’s Plays, game reviews and pretty much everything that has a frame of their product in it. Because, obviously, LPs are a great threat to the game industry. Or something. I don’t really care about the why. This is about as stupid as it comes and just another step toward the downfall of corporate publishing.

Usually I’d just scream a couple of profanities into the Twitter void, but this seems relevant enough that I’d like to have it around for when we release our games and the question of where we stand on this issue comes up.

So here it is, our official stance:

We don’t give a fuck. Play it, record yourself playing it, share it in any way you like, monetize to your heart’s content. LPs are free advertising, and we don’t plan on punishing you for your help in spreading our work. If you make a few bucks off it, that’s more than fair. And I mean, the line’s pretty clear, right? You take an image or a piece of music or something out of our game and sell it, that ain’t cool. You do a commentary or share your gaming experience with others, that couldn’t be more fine. Monetize. It’s a form of journalism after all, and journalists get paid for talking about games and showing off screenshots and whatnot, so why shouldn’t you?

There are no strings attached either. I’d ask you to put up a link to our website and do some reasonable spoiler warning where appropriate, but it’s not mandatory. Do whatever feels right for you.

So to sum up: Don’t resell our stuff. Do sell your commentary. Any and all footage is fair game. Use it. Show it. Share it. And don’t forget to be a good person.

All right, I need a post to finish up the page design, but since we’re already here, why not take this opportunity to give you a bit of a heads up regarding all the wonderful things to come?

So as you may or may not know (if you don’t, Games should be ready by the time you’re reading this), we’ve chosen to work on a classic top-down RPG with flying pirates and turn-based combat as our very first project as Hypnotic Owl, and while we both have quite a bit of experience with game development—both recreationally and professionally—running our own business is completely new territory for us. It’s very exciting and very. very. terrifying.

But good news! We wanna share this little adventure of ours with you! In excruciating detail! Meaning, we’re gonna do a wee bit of blogging about all the stuff we’ve done and the things we’ll do. Hopefully it’ll be of use to some of you, or at least interesting for those who are curious how we do things here at the Owl.

Anyway, as Chief President of Business & Game Design™ Jan’s gonna focus on the design aspects of our games and what it takes to found and run a company in Germany. Not an easy subject, lemme tell ya; I still haven’t figured out what exactly happend there, so I sure am looking forward to his explanation. Maybe third time’s the charm.

I, meanwhile, will write a bit about the game itself, its inception, how we go about making it, the technology we use, plans, hopes and dreams and stuff like that. I’m still writing this post as a (hopefully) more interesting Lorem Ipsum, so I haven’t really figured out what it will be exactly, but something about why I love HTML5 so much or how we got from “We need something quick ‘n easy!” to this seems appropriate.

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